Friday night Pandemic Watch - Swine Flu coming to you?

[lightningBugout]

FYI new CDC recommendations this week state strongly that anyone who smokes should get the pneumonia vaccine asap.

[Sounder]

This is from the horses mouth, so to speak Dr.Maurice Hilleman, senior scientist at Merck.

It contains some good history on vaccine development.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCus0zB_ ... r_embedded

[Sounder]

http://www.vueweekly.com/article.php?id=13444

In Australia, where the flu season is ending, there have been 186 deaths out of nearly 22 million people. That was with no vaccine available. Our thinking has again been shaped by, as Noam Chomsky in his signature matter-of-fact manner would say, a media that is primarily a public relations industry whose function isn't so much to inform as to manufacture consent.

[whipstitch]

Just came across this exchange from 10/30 on another forum. Is there a new strain out there?

I work in a high volume ER.in midwest and it is getting bad here.....35yo almost dead on vent now healthy before......59 yo healthy guy dead in 4 hours in er last nite....oh boy this chit is bad....over 50 cases a day in er now..the flu test is worthless

Funny you should mention that, kli. My better half who works in ob/gyn in a VERY upscale area said that the hospital at which the practice she works with is based just had 4 healthy pregnant women die from swine flu in the last 24 hours.

Docs here are trying to not spread panic, but word is going around that, at least down here, a stronger type is starting to circulate among young otherwise healthy adults.

we are noticing the SAME thing....this sucker is ramping up...i am worried hope i am wrong.....but the morbidity seems to be suddenly worsening

My daughter had it in late July. She did not even have a fever, and the only reason we took her to the doctor is because she had a deep cough and we knew h1n1 was going around.

Last month, my son got it, and he had a fever for 1 1/2 days with the same deep cough.

Now, through my wife I am hearing about a number of deaths. Also, went to a charity function last Thurs night and a friend of mine informed us his close friend is on ventilator in hospital and may not survive. He said his friend was otherwise healthy, non-smoker, around 45.

Other people at the function started talking about h1n1 DEATHS about other people they knew. Mostly 30-50s healthy adults.

Not good. But more and more anecdotes of things gone seriously bad for people that should not be dying from this, IF you believe what the government has to say about this.

Take it from someone who's been there and done that: this mutha is well on its way to overwhelming an already strained health care system. You're right about another thing: the test is worth exactly phuck all.

While I'm not exactly on the front lines, so to speak, I'm getting a distinct notion of where this is all heading through my research and firsthand observation of the infected (myself included). I'm seeing subtle yet distinct variations of Influenza A (other than what has been turned up in Brazil and Peru) and these variants will only continue to diverge, wreaking more havoc as they reassort.

I won't go into any great detail about my recent findings, but suffice it to say, I'm getting major funding all of the sudden, and it's no longer to be directed at prevention, but rather crisis management and loss mitigation - take that for what it is. The vaccines, while conferring a certain degree of immunity to the virus, are arriving too late (this thing is already spreading at an almost exponential rate) and will not be efficacious towards the end of an extended flu season.

A good friend of mine (medical examiner) is quite busy in these parts.

[chiggerbit]

I don't know, whipstitch. They've said all along that their worry was that this could mutate. They've known since late spring, early summer that this one was extremely, extremely transmissible. And that's one of the things that had them worried, it mutating and becoming more deadly as well as maintaining its transmissibility.

There are links in earlier pages about flu's ability to mutate. Just because it didn't in the southern hemisphere, where they've finished out their winter doesn't mean that it can't mutate in the blink of an eye up here.

[lightningBugout]

I don't know what forum that came from but it strongly contradicts the anecdotal evidence I have heard from several docs, at least insofar as the deaths of healthy people.

According to the CDC, "19 children died of swine flu last week
That brings the total to 114 children deaths since the pandemic's start, compared with 40 to 50 in a normal flu season."

This whole thing has been so rife with paranoia and speculation. Like - H1N1 is a superbug designed to kill us off. No! The vaccine is the culprit. It's not that bad, people are over-reacting like mad. No! The CDC is hiding the real numbers! Which is basically what these anecdotes imply.

A good friend of mine is a senior doc at a very prestigious Childrens Hospital. There are alot of kids sick with H1N1. But mostly not that sick. And surely not dropping like flies. Paranoia is driving kids to the ERs in droves and completely overworking the eployees.

In my own circles I've known of a single person (and mind you I live within a segment of a very major city that is very socially active and out and potentially exposed pretty much 3 nights a week) who got very sick. Sure he was out for two weeks but that usually happens at least sometimes with the regular flu too.

Alas, I am probably the only RIer who will admit to doing so but I am getting the vaccine later today at the urging of my doc. Will let you know when the radio nano particles begin broadcasting back to NWO HQ.

[justdrew]

This is from the horses mouth, so to speak Dr.Maurice Hilleman, senior scientist at Merck.

It contains some good history on vaccine development.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCus0zB_ilE

I'd like to see this audio sourced via somewhere other than just Dr. Leonard Horowitz (which is where that video comes from). Can anyone else find the original source of it? What Hillman seems to be saying is to my understanding, confirmed by other researchers in the field also. Maybe Horowitz is right, but if he's wrong... or mixing a little truth with a lot of other crap.

[chiggerbit]

Good luck on getting vaccinated, buggy. Supplies are trickling in awfully slowly. Like I've said before, I think it's possible that this one will burn itself out before the majority of people will even have a chance of getting vaccinated, it's moving that fast.

[lightningBugout]

Good luck on getting vaccinated, buggy. Supplies are trickling in awfully slowly. Like I've said before, I think it's possible that this one will burn itself out before the majority of people will even have a chance of getting vaccinated, it's moving that fast.

Boom done. Was there for less than half an hour. The world is crazy. I am in a "high(er) risk" group due to asthma but not so high that my federal geography should be giving me such easy access to the vaccine while kids (and pregnant women) in other states are still waiting. But so it goes.

FWIW despite the apparently blunt needle, I literally didn't even feel the shot. Also, my name was tracked as having received the shot but not, in any way, correlated to the shot I received.

Will make sure to let you know if I sprout monkey appendages or my visage turns Bush-like.

The Giullain Barre risk was actually very well publicized in the info given out with the shot. Overall, one of the better efforts I have witnessed on the part of LA county.

[chiggerbit]

Wow, i can't believe you got it that quickly, buggy, asthma or not.

I haven't seen one single report yet of adverse effects from anyone who has gotten the shot.

[lightningBugout]

Wow, i can't believe you got it that quickly, buggy, asthma or not.

I haven't seen one single report yet of adverse effects from anyone who has gotten the shot.

I've read of a small handful of serious allergic reactions but nothing out of the ordinary for a flu vaccine.

Part of what convinced me to go ahead and listen to my doc is reading that, with the Giullain Barre cases in 1976, its actually not clear if they were caused by the vaccine or just associated with the flu itself.

Btw, my doctor friend looked at the most recent CDC stats this afternoon and said the flu mortality in raw numbers is, so far, about 15% higher than a normal flu season. Which is not much in a historical sense. Though of course that may change.

[Nordic]

Why is the needle blunt?

Why, if this is just a regular vaccine, created like all the other flu vaccines, is the needle blunt?

It's thicker so that something bigger than normal can be injected into you.

What is that?

Doesn't that bother anybody?

[lightningBugout]

Why is the needle blunt?

Why, if this is just a regular vaccine, created like all the other flu vaccines, is the needle blunt?

It's thicker so that something bigger than normal can be injected into you.

What is that?

Doesn't that bother anybody?

Not really. Given that RI is the 6th google hit for "h1n1 blunt needle" with GLP preceding it, I have the sense that someone made a highly speculative conjecture about the meaning of the larger needle and now its spreading among CTers.

For example, another anomaly - part of the reason the vaccine is taking longer than a regular flu vaccine is because h1n1 takes longer to grow in eggs than a more common flu. That's probably an idiosyncratic thing, an anomaly. Same with the needle size. If Alex Jones were to make some hypothesis about the growth rate being connected to the presence of reptilluminati eggs in the vaccine needing more time to gestate, I guarantee that rumor would spread as well.

[chiggerbit]

Btw, my doctor friend looked at the most recent CDC stats this afternoon and said the flu mortality in raw numbers is, so far, about 15% higher than a normal flu season. Which is not much in a historical sense. Though of course that may change.

I think what has so many people spooked is that the mortality is happening in a much younger population. \

What's kind of interesting, from what I'm seeing, is that those who are using the home-type remedies to avoid or modify this flu seem to be having more serious symptoms, or for longer, anyway. Not sure if they've noticed that yet, though. They're the ones who, mostly, are determined not to get the shot.

[lightningBugout]

So much of the CT around h1n1 plays not just on mistrust of authority but also on lack of medical expertise. I know nothing about needle size but quickly found the following which explains, in general, the meaning and utility of different needle sizes. From what I can deduce, the h1n1 vaccine is probably slightly more viscous than a regular flu vaccine. Is there some reason I should be frightened of that? I'm all for doing my own research if, for example, I had kids and was trying to decide if I thought they should be immunized. But what AJ and crew are doing with H1N1 is pure opportunistic fear-mongering. He doesn't even have the balls to get to the real socio-political issues around say manafacturing consent, fear vs information in public health and social programs, social justice wrt equal access to healthcare, and/or the role of industrial agriculture and livestock in the birth of pathogens like this one. No, he's worried about a cartoon fantasy in which the "NWO" is indiscriminately sticking nanotech into random folks. Does he have pregnant listeners who are going to die because they avoid getting the vaccine? Probably.

How to choose a needle size for an injection

A 25 gauge needle is a fairly small needle that also comes in short lengths making them ideal for injections that are done frequently i.e. once or more times a day. They are very sharp and thin making the injection less painful. Insulin syringes have 25 gauge needles which is helpful since diabetes sometimes need to give themselves more than one injection a day.

Tuberculin syringes (used for TB skin tests) also have 25 gauge short needles and are sharp enough to only pierce the most superficial skin layer and allow injection of TB test fluid that creates that small little fluid blister. TB syringes with 25 gauge needles are the needle of choice for daily heparin shots so that the injection site bleeds very little after the shot and the short needle length puts the medication at the proper depth.

A 22 gauge needle is used for injections into muscle (intra-muscular) provided that the medication is fairly liquid like Vitamin B12 mentioned before, or into the layer above the muscle called the subcutaneous space. A 22 gauge needle is also longer 1- 1 inches in length, so it can reach the deeper space. All pain medication, many antibiotics and steroids are given through a 22 gauge needle.

Choose a 20 gauge needle if the medication is thicker or more vicious so the medication can flow more easily. The larger the gauge needle, the larger the opening inside the needle is for the fluid to flow through. This larger opening is sometime referred to as a larger "bore" needle. Needles that are 20 gauge are never used for subcutaneous injections, they are simply too big. If the medication being given is irritating a "Z" track technique is used to prevent leakage of the drug into the surrounding tissue.

Blood drawing requires more judgment and skill than giving an injection and paying attention to gauge is more important. The diameter of a blood cell is pretty small and in adults, blood is supposed to be drawn through a minimum of a 20 gauge needle since they have a larger opening or bore to prevent damage to the blood cells.

In smaller adults and young children, blood is frequently drawn with a 21, 22 or a 23 gauge butterfly needles (named from the plastic wings next to the needle). However, the risk of damaging the blood cells is higher and blood flows slower through the smaller gauge needles risking early clotting in the tube. This can make the lab results inaccurate so larger bore needles such as a 20 or 18 gauge are preferred in adults.

Ultimately, thorough knowledge of proper choice of needle gauge will ensure the patient experiences the least pain, the most efficient delivery of medication and the greatest benefit during injections or blood draws. No one ever likes to have to re-stick a patient because blood or medication won't flow properly so choose wisely when you make your first selection.

ON EDIT:

All that said, I am by no means a babe in the woods wrt h1n1. Something is utterly and deeply wrong here. The differential spread of the disease in varying countries is fucking bizarre. And I couldn't help but notice how much the atmosphere at the clinic I went to today felt like 9/11 or Katrina. Shared fear and collective trauma. Whatever the genesis, its the hottest thing going these days. And its only going to get worse (hotter). But then a decade or two ago, forward thinkers were very straightforward about saying: "terrorism" and plagues and global warming are going to happen and going to change (ne devastate) civilization. So its happening. And I, for one, am getting used to it. Being in a public place that has been converted into a public health emergency site feels eerily normal. After all I've seen the 9/11 and Katrina footage so many times, you know. The world is ending without even a whimper. Pretty much just as we have been told for 30 years now by people who have been looking towards the future with a sober eye. Say la vee.